Mr. Jonathan Wirth has delivered us a journey into the world of copy protection screens, graphical edits, and expanded endings. That is to say, into the world of EarthBound.

The legitimacy of the cartridge has been called into question since it was first mentioned online in 1998. The game had been known to be in development all the way back in 1991. Now, more than a decade later, Lost Levels will deliver some answers about this unique game.

Good article...the one thing that I find interesting is that--although it's been years since I played the game--I remember very distinctly a townsperson somewhere or other noting that the bad corporation was planning on building a strip club in the town. How'd that get past the censors?

During recent history (also known as something like the past three years), a certain self-proclaimed expert on NES prototypes proclaimed that there was no way the cartridge was real. If memory serves, he claimed to have "inside sources" that proved beyond a doubt that the cartridge was a fake.

Many of the people running NES websites that cover prototypes went along with this assumption. Which means that all their followers went along with that assumption. Which means that many of the people who are into "the scene" went along with that assumption.

I don't remember the exact split back in the day, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say that at least half of the people around these days, including said self-proclaimed expert, thought that it was a fake.

During recent history (also known as something like the past three years), a certain self-proclaimed expert on NES prototypes proclaimed that there was no way the cartridge was real. If memory serves, he claimed to have "inside sources" that proved beyond a doubt that the cartridge was a fake.

Many of the people running NES websites that cover prototypes went along with this assumption. Which means that all their followers went along with that assumption. Which means that many of the people who are into "the scene" went along with that assumption.

Yeah, the whole thing got so far in the collecting world the seventh edition of the Digital Press guide called it "an obvious fake".

Speaking of which, I'm a bit dissapointed about the feedback we've received on the article so far. Doesn't anyone want to try and say that later Nintendo Power article is OMG COMPLETE 100% PROOF they weren't even thinking about bring the game out? Perhaps someone would like to accuse me of computer generating "photos" of the dev team hard at work? Or maybe......LOST LEVELS IS ACTUALLY JUST ANOTHER ELABORATE SCAM BY DEMI!!!!!!